


The Power of Hidden Emotions

by Dartxni



Category: Matilda (1996), Matilda - Roald Dahl
Genre: Age Difference, F/F, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:05:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dartxni/pseuds/Dartxni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Matilda's power comes back after a long dormancy at the age of 17, Matilda realizes that it was inspired and somehow induced by suppressed emotions. When she was a child the emotions she had to repress were mostly related to anger, but these days she was hiding an inappropriate crush on sweet Jennifer Honey (age 32), her legal guardian. Featuring telekinetic powers as an absolutely terrible metaphor for raging hardons, this story is a remake of 'The Energy of Hidden Emotions,' located on fanfiction.net, which is now an officially abandoned fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Being Happy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Energy of Hidden Emotions](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/34732) by Dartxni. 



> This story is a remake of 'The Energy of Hidden Emotions.' Please do not read the other version on fanfiction.net - though I will leave it up for now - because it is old and the earliest chapter was posted almost 10 years ago and I think this version is much better. It is not the exact same story though.
> 
> I don't really intend the relationship to read as mother/daughter, though it will definitely hold tones of emotionally more mature adult paired with emotionally less mature teenager. If the pairing squicks you, don't read it. /I am so sorry mara, you don't deserve this/
> 
> I tried to finish the whole story before my school started again, but unfortunately I got distracted by Elsanna goodness. But don't fret, the story is not stalled out.
> 
> Reviews are heavily appreciated. If you are an old reader of The Energy of Hidden Emotions, welcome back! This is for you.

Matilda stacked her reference books onto the shelf with a smile of fondness for the old friends who had helped her through such a challenging school year. Any way she looked at it, Matilda had overloaded herself. Now she could breath - for a short while - before she dove into completing her dissertation to get her Masters of Science at the University of Leeds.

It was fantastic that she lived in Leeds and had been able to live at home while attending the prestigious university. She would have missed Jenny way too much if she had needed to move in order to pursue her education.

Matilda took herself downstairs to help Jennifer prep Dinner, though help was a strong word. What she actually did was sit at the wooden table in the kitchen and watch Jenny cook.

Matilda liked to watch Jenny do things. She never got over how graceful she was while doing absolutely anything. She knew that Jenny had wanted to be a dancer when she was a little girl. Unfortunately, her aunt had considered dance to be the most worthless thing ever invented by humans. Nonetheless, every movement she made was to an internal melody. While Jennifer worked, every once in a while she would turn and look at Matilda with a pleased and tender look that made Matilda want to melt.

“Do you want to stir for me while I do the chicken?” Jenny asked.

“Oh sure.”

Matilda got off her butt and took over the station at the stove, eyes following Jenny as she bent to reach into the refrigerator for the chicken. She sighed heavily, glad that Jennifer didn’t have a clue that Matilda was basically addicted to being around her. She had long ago decided that happiness was defined by being in the same room as Jennifer Honey.

“Hey, pass me a knife would you?” Jenny asked.

It was barely within her reach so Matilda had to lean away from stove to get it. To her surprise, it glided last two inches to land handle first her palm.

“I saw that!” Jennifer said. “Your power really is coming back. Isn’t it?”

It first happened about a week ago. Jenny had interrupted Matilda’s studying for her last exam to force a breather upon her, in the form of a game of scrabble. Matilda had been amused by the way Jenny’s hair kept falling in front of her eyes as she leaned over the board. Jenny had called her on her distracted state and Matilda, flustered, had reached for her pieces, only to find them floating toward her like levitating superconductors. After it had happened once she had tried it again with Jenny’s encouragement, but failed to make anything special happen.

She had been forced to put it out of her mind to concentrate on studying for her last exam. Her grades were important, and while the return of her powers 10 years after she had lost them was surprising, it wasn’t the strangest thing that had ever happened to her.

She had first come across this seemingly supernatural telekinetic ability when she was a little kid. The ability had disappeared after a short while. It had motivated her to pursue her masters in science in the area of quantum physics. She wanted to research the physical laws behind the ability, although she had never shared her own experiences with the academic establishment. If they believed her, she feared for her safety. She did not want to become some sort of lab rat. If they didn’t believe her, she knew that it might ruin her chances to ever be a respected scientist.

Jenny had supported her in keeping the secret.

Now Matilda and Jenny sat across from each other at the dinner table. Jenny had dug into her dinner but Matilda stared at her food, concentrating intently. She was hoping for a repeat showing of her power.

It would be so much easier to research something that she could actually test. She remembered the first time she had ever moved something on purpose. She remembered how she had felt, the words she had used put herself in the mind frame where her power worked.

> “I'm smart, you're dumb;
> 
> I'm big, you're little;
> 
> I'm right, you're wrong,
> 
> and there's nothing you can do about it.”

Those had been her father’s taunts.

She had been such an angry little girl. Her life at that point had been one unfair moment after another. She had believed that it was her duty to punish all the terrible people around her. Negative emotions had driven her powers back then. She called upon those feelings now.

She thought, for the first time in years, what it was like to watch Miss Trunchbull come into Jennifers classroom and show her friend such disdain and disrespect. The sick feeling she had gotten while watching a kind and wonderful adult be bullied the way her own father bullied her. She let herself become angry at those old memories, attempting to recreate the feelings of her youth. It wasn’t working though. She could not raise the fork out of her dish. It felt utterly impossible to do so.

She recalled more recent events. That time when she was accused of plagiarising because another student had stolen her work and turned it in as their own. The teacher had called her a lying, cheating, little girl, and tried to get her expelled. He hadn’t believed that someone of her age could be that smart, or dedicated. But he’d sealed his fate when he had explained, snidely, that men showed more variance in their IQ than women did. Men were more likely to be either mental retards or savants than women were, and therefore Matilda could not be as smart as she ‘pretended’ to be because she was a girl.

By the end of that fiasco, she had gotten him fired by finding and making public a paper that he had plagiarised when he had been a student. He’d gotten away with it for so long because back when he had written them, papers were not automatically submitted to anti-plagiarising software for analysis.

That was in her first year, and after that she had experienced few problems of the same kind. She focused on that sentiment of giving someone their well deserved punishment but she could not raise the fork.

“Matilda, are you going to kill it or eat it?” Jenny asked mildly.

Matilda groaned and began to rub the furrows out of her brows. “I can’t do it. I am doing all the things I did back then, I am working myself up and getting angry. It’s not working at all.”

“You didn’t seem angry earlier while we were cooking. What were you feeling when you grabbed the knife?”

Matilda had an excellent memory, as close to the stereotypical eidetic memory of fiction as real life could supply. The scene had been tranquil. Jenny cooking, her just sitting at the table in the kitchen, her table, her kitchen. At home. She had been feeling calm and happy - not unusual feelings for her to feel these days at all.

“Happy.”

“So... be happy.”

She looked at the fork and made peace with it. If it didn’t want to rise, that was ok. She loved the fork. It part of her home. She had fond memories of the forks in this house, she had eaten many fine things with them. The fork, forkishly refused to rise into the air. Well, she hadn’t expected it to.

Happiness was a warm cup of hot chocolate on rainy day. Happiness was putting two facts that nobody had ever put together before and reaching a conclusion and realising that this new idea made the universe make more sense. Happiness was the day Jennifer Honey signed her legal guardianship papers. If that wasn’t happiness, she didn’t know what was, and she focused on that giddy feeling. 

The fork remained steadfast and refused to budge.

It was evident that emotion was the key to unlocking her power, but what emotion exactly? This morning, the telekinesis had surprised her by showing up with the sunrise. She had been dreaming before she woke up. The first thing that had caught her eye had been some of the books on her shelves. She had felt compelled to test her powers, for some reason sure that they would work.

Lazy, with sleep still in her eyes, she had expected the books to rise, and they had. It was easy. She played with them a short while until they all fell to the floor at once. She couldn’t get them to dance again, so she gave up got out of bed.

Before she had woken though.. she had been dreaming. She had nearly forgotten the dream, having been distracted by the unexpected return of her power. But now, because she had thought of it, she remembered the dream.

It had been little more than an impression of being hugged from behind, with a hand resting lightly under her shirt, lightly touching the sensitive skin of her stomach. A small thing, but it had felt significant and intense. The person holding her in this embrace had been Jenny and she had known it, even though she couldn’t see her face. Matilda had woken up feeling light headed and woozy. She felt dizzy just thinking about it now, and clenched the table with her hands. Woah.

The fork rose out out of the dish.

“Oh, look! You did it!” Matilda looked away from the fork full of chicken and looked at Jenny. Her face had broken into a smile of pure delight. Carefully, Matilda put the fork down in her curry and rice, but she felt like she was buzzing.

She was hyper aware of her limbs, and of the way she was breathing, and of a feeling behind her eyes. A sort of internal pressure, or heat. She turned around and lifted the all the kitchen spoons off the wall where they hung on little hooks. She juggled them until the pressure went away.

It took about a minute before she felt ready to send them back to their homes. She looked down at her hands, which she now noticed were gripping the table. She specifically did not look up at Jenny.

“Oh my god, It’s been so long since you could do that. I am so pleased for you.”

“I need to go for a little bit.” Matilda said, standing up abruptly. She needed to get away and think and... experiment. She suddenly thought she knew what emotion unlocked her power, and it was as embarrassing as hell. She had to be sure before she even brought it up.

“Don’t you want to eat first?”

No. Honesty was best. “I think I might know what unlocked this telekinesis, but I need to test it out, experiment, and for that I need to be alone.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah... this is important.”

“All right, I’ll save your dinner for you.”

Matilda pursed her lips in a grateful, if tight smile and went up to her room. She sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest and hugged herself until her heart stopped beating so awkwardly.


	2. Being Seen

 

[♥]|||[♦]|||[♣]|||[♠]

Now Matilda loved Jennifer Honey, wholeheartedly and without reservation, and Jenny loved her back the same way, adoringly.

Unfortunately, her own feelings came bound with some less altruistic yearnings. She wanted to be near Jenny - almost all the time. Sometimes it was all she could do not to curl up with her head in Jenny’s lap, like she had done when she was small. She was an attention hound, if the attention came from Jenny.

The best thing in her world was Jenny’s eyes on her, an amused smile crossing her lips. She tried not to act as if she felt this way, knowing that it would cross a line of sorts to give into all of her whims, but Jenny had never even noticed that the line was there.

Jenny didn’t even know that Matilda was attracted to women. Matilda didn’t know how to confess it without confessing her feelings toward Jenny. She knew she had a tendency to blabber, and she didn’t want Jenny to re-evaluate the way she acted around her. For that matter, Matilda didn’t know Jenny’s orientation either. In the 10 years they had lived together, Jenny had never dated, not that Matilda knew of. It would be, in the least, very surprising to find out that Jenny dated without her knowledge.

Jenny didn’t hide things from her.

Matilda really didn’t want her powers to be attached to her feelings. That sounded unendurably embarrassing. And hopefully it wasn’t true. Matilda closed her eyes and thought about Jenny’s face. Her expressive eyebrows, her soft brown eyes. Her lips. She thought about things that she always avoided thinking about, but sometimes couldn’t avoid, like the swell of Jenny’s breast, their fullness as Jenny enclosed her in a completely platonic hug.

Matilda wanted to open her eyes. That odd pressure was back again. It was frustrating, like an itch that had to be scratched, or holding one’s breath and needing to breath. So she opened her eyes. The first thing her gaze lit upon was was a pack of playing cards. The pack alone was boring. It didn’t engage her mind.  She let it tumble through the air before stopping it in front of her face. Using her power, she peeled the wrapper and lifted the lid. The cards flew out, scattering about the room then coming back together. She set them to chasing each other in swirls and clumps as if they were a school of fish. In spite of her angst, she smiled at the sight, and sat up. She had missed this.

When she was a child, as her situation had improved and the underlying unfairness of of her life had ended she had lost the need to constantly keep her anger in check. Gradually, she had also felt the need to use her power less and less, until one day, when she wanted to use it, it didn’t worked. She supposed it was because she had stopped feeling powerless, and somehow, paradoxically, lost her power.

Now it had returned. What did that say about her life?

There was a soft knock on the door. “Matilda?”

The cards froze in the air. Matilda sighed. She really wanted to process this more before she had to bare all to Jenny. But she didn’t want to worry her either.

“Come in,” she said.

Jenny spun around and stared at the cards. “This is incredible. You are so amazing, Matilda. I mean, you are always amazing. But this is magic. It’s back.”

“Yeah... I am more inclined to call it an unexplained phenomena than magic, but it does seem to be back.” She laughed self consciously.

“You said it’s different from before. Your power used to be unlocked by anger, but its not anymore. You seemed happy.”

“That isn’t exactly correct.” Matilda called the deck of cards to herself and took hold of them with her hands. “I did some experiments, and the results have shown me that, uh, it is not happiness that fuels the telekinetic ability I seem to possess.” Matilda recognised that she had fallen into academic speech patterns. She was also shuffling and reshuffling the deck of cards in her hands.

“It’s not?”

“No. The telekinetic ability seems to be unlocked by certain feelings. Feelings like...” Matilda tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She had never been one for stage fright. She could power through this now. Jenny, basically a saint, patiently waited for her to get her words out. “Feelings like attraction.”

“Oh.. attraction.” It was hard to gauge the look on Jenny’s face.

“More precisely... arousal.” Matilda looked intently at Jenny’s face as she finally put it out there and she saw the whole range of expressions that appeared on her face. First curiosity, then surprise, and then she watched as Jenny’s cheeks flushed bright red.

“So... you were thinking about a boy then. Earlier.”

Matilda suddenly saw the future. If she went with that, took that pass, eventually she would get a fake boyfriend who she would introduce to Jenny. Jenny would love him, and cook for him, and soon she would be fake engaged, and then there would be a fake wedding, and fake fake fake fake...

“No. Nooo no no no no. I was thinking about a woman.” Catastrophic fake life, averted. “I like women.” That is a terribly awkward phrase. She should have said she liked girls. 17 is confusingly in that space between being called a girl or a woman, but in colloquial speech at her age they said things like “‘ like girls,’ or ‘I like boys.” Not ‘I like women.’ Only Jennifer was 32, and definitely a woman, and Jennifer was the woman she liked.

“Oh. Oh! I should have thought of that. It was heterocentric for me to assume that you were attracted to men.” Jenny said. There she went being wonderful again. “Is there a particular woman? If you want to share.  You can share anything with me. No judgement is ever going to come from these lips.” She tapped them.

Matilda looked at her skeptically. If she only knew. “No. No-one in particular. I wasn’t thinking about anyone in particular.” That made it sound like she was just hanging out in the kitchen thinking about women in general. How aweful.

Jenny’s eyebrows raised at that, now she was the skeptical one.

“Well, I meant what I said. You can share anything with me, no judgements. Unless she’s a Tory, because I could never forgive that.”

Matilda smiled. Trust Jenny to use humor to inoculate against awkwardness. “No Tory’s. Gotcha.”

“And of course, you can also keep your privacy if you want. I’ll go, you probably have more experiments to do.”

Experiments? Did she mean...Matilda’s face felt the heat of a thousand suns, and half the objects in her field of view suddenly levitated about half an inch off the ground.

Jenny shook her head, face squarely in the blushing territory. “That’s not what I meant... I don’t know what I meant. I’ll just be downstairs.” She didn’t precisely flee, but she exited the room and closed the door behind her before Matilda had the chance to assure her that no further experimentation was necessary.

Matilda carefully let everything back down to the ground. It was hard to release her mental hold on them. It felt as if a part of her attention was still focused on some of the objects. Experimentally, she selected a tennis shoe and closed her eyes, willing the shoe to approach her. When she opened her eyes she saw that the shoe was hovering in front of her. Interesting. It seemed that if she had a mental hold on something, even if she wasn’t looking at it, she could still make it move. She closed her eyes again. This time she concentrated on the feeling of letting go until she wasn’t focused on anything.

Nothing had ever felt more frustrating. It was like looking at an equation with an error in it. It was like trying to write with the nub of a broken pencil. She quickly opened her eyes and looked down at the deck of cards in her hands, splaying them out magician style, hands free. She instantly felt much better. She started making them weave amongst each other. Within a couple seconds, a few of them started to fall out of the air; one by one as she lost her grip on them. Pretty soon she only had one left, which eventually also drifted softly to the floor. She stood up to collect them, wondering why her power had dissipated yet again.

Matilda was still a little hungry because she hadn’t gotten a chance to eat. If her power was going to recede again, she should probably take this chance to eat. But then, Jenny would be down there. She probably would have questions. Matilda wondered what Jenny thought she was doing up here, ‘experimenting.’

What if Jenny thought she was up here masturbating?

The thought of Jenny thinking about her touching herself was, frankly, terrifying. And there it was, and this was bad, terribly terribly arousing.  Of course her telekinesis popped right up again. If Jenny saw that everything was floating around her like pens did on the International Space Station, she’d figure out that she was feeling a bit bothered.

Ok, breathe. Calm down, Matilda. She sat down on the bed and tried to concentrate on the soothing quality of the cards as they twisted in front of her. Even breaths, this was not a time to be thinking about touching herself. She scrunched her legs together, trying to convince her body of that, and managed to accidently grind against her ankle. Oh, that felt way too good. Her pack of 52 playing cards was not going to be enough.

She also knew that there was no way she was going to calm down at this point unless she went through the eye of the needle. She cast her eyes over her desk, adding pencils and pens and paper weights to her collection of flying items, and as a precaution, locked the door. It sure was convenient to be able to do all that without even standing up. If Jenny came in and saw her with her hands down her pants...

Because Matilda had stuck her hand down her pants.

If Jenny came in right now, she’d see Matilda laying on top of her blankets with her head against the pillows, staring straight at the door. What if she hadn’t locked it right? What if Jenny was standing right outside, listening to the sounds coming from the room? Matilda surprised herself when she let out a small moan. Oh god, she wanted Jenny to hear it. She moaned again, softly, so softly so no one could possibly hear.

Some of the books came off the walls, entering what was becoming something of a whirlpool of floating possessions. That wasn’t good, she had better finish this up quick. She quickened the pace and pressure at which she was fingering herself. She hadn’t done this in way way way too long, she’d basically avoided it completely because fantasizing over her own adopted mother? That was definitely on the list of things that were not ok.

Her Periodic Table of Elements Poster ripped itself away from the wall. With a thump and a rattle, some of the books hit her dresser, followed by her shoes.  She tried to close her eyes, but that just made more things hit the walls, since she wasn’t able to accurately direct them.  This was really really getting out of hand. Please, she just wanted to come like right now, to get it out of her system. What if Jenny was right outside right now? The thought was like a live-wire going straight to her clit.

“Matilda? Are you ok?”

Matilda pulled her hand out out of her pants, unable to help from cupping herself to maintain pressure. It was maddening, this was the worst possible time to stop. She squeezed her legs together.

Her bookcase fell over.

Maybe this was the right time to stop after all.

“Shit!” she whispered, regretfully withdrawing her hand and rolling into a fetal position.

“Matilda!”

“I’m ok. Really. I’m ok.” She hopped out of bed and grabbed a shirt lying on the floor which she used it to wipe her fingers. She took a sip of water from a water bottle and pressed it against her cheeks willing them to cool down. Finally, she went to the door and unlocked it. She’d downgraded to what she mentally cataloged as arousal level 3, meaning she only needed to float the pack of 52 cards, which she kept out of sight from the door when she opened it.

“I’m ok, and I’m really really sorry Jenny. Things got out of hand and... I really really don’t want to talk about it right at this exact moment.” 

Jenny peered over Matilda’s shoulder and took in the disarray.

“All right. We can talk about it later. Will you be okay?”

Matilda cocked her head sideways, and scrunched her face together. “Honestly... I don’t know right now. I just to think and like... not experiment or anything like that, maybe ever again.” She felt lightheaded and basically just wanted to melt into the floorboards. Her stomach squalled angrily at her. “And I guess I am a little bit hungry.”

“Ok, well I’ll heat you up some dinner ok? And you can take a shower?”

Matilda grimaced. Could she die now? “Yeah...”

 

[♥]|||[♦]|||[♣]|||[♠]


	3. Being Held

 

Jennifer Honey put the tea kettle on as she reheated Matilda’s dinner. She wished she hadn’t had to go to Matilda’s door when she heard all that racket. It was obvious that Matilda had been thinking about something arousing, which was... Jenny blinked, shaking her head. Jenny was going to have to get over being embarrassed that Matilda had a sexuality. The girl was a healthy, and now she knew it, gay seventeen year old.

Jenny couldn’t expect her to grow up to basically be a spinster like she was. The thirty-two year old had long ago come to the conclusion that she was probably asexual. She had never wanted a lover in her life. She didn’t need one. She had had many love affairs over the years, with Mr. Darcy and Jo Marsh, with Atticus Finch and Hermione Granger. And many many others. She didn’t want to find a human lover whom she would have to somehow slot into her life with Matilda.

But Matilda was different from Jenny. She had a libido, and it was obvious that there was a girl in her life that she wanted. Or was in an older woman? Something about the way Matilda had phrased it made Jenny think so, which concerned her because she didn’t want Matilda’s feelings to be crushed and she didn’t want her to be taken advantage of. But tt was a matter of time before Matilda realised that she had grown up and was ready to leave the nest. Jenny had to make this easy for her. She had to be the rock that Matilda could cling to as she charted a way through the maelstrom.

 

 

Matilda kept her face down as she ate. Jenny leaned against a counter and watched her, finger playing with her lip contemplatively.

Matilda finished the bowl and put it aside. “I think I need to go on medication.”

“What for?” asked Jenny.

“Well... it is obviously dangerous for me to engage in sexual activity. It would be a lot easier if I just didn’t feel like, well... horny all the time. I was thinking one of the anti-androgynes, like spironolactone. If not spiro, there are a lot of other options out there that are known to affect the libido. Infact, I think I could figure out the script on my own, we would just need to find someone who would... ”

“Honey no,” Jenny said, walking over to sit across from Matilda and reaching out to hold one of her hands. “We are not going to do that. We are going to figure it out some other way, and you are going to be fine and you are not going to chemically castrate yourself.”

Matilda winced and continued to look down at their entwined hands, fiddling with her fingers a bit. She looked up, a little shy. “Thank you for not freaking out about this. You’re taking it really well.”

Jenny tightened her grip on Matilda’s hand, feeling a wave of affection for her young friend.

“Don’t worry about it.” She reached out and touched the side of Matilda’s face. “You are so special to me. I know you know that, but I probably don’t say it enough.”

She watched as Matilda closed her eyes and leaned in to the touch. She closes her eyes and scrunched them together, the tip of her eyelashes holding a tear. When she pulled away, it was reluctantly.

“I’m going to go to bed early. I’m really tired and this has been...it has been a day.”

Jenny let her go.

Matilda seemed to avoid Jenny all the next day. Jenny understood that she probably was feeling overexposed and let her hide. But after dinner had been cleared away and before Matilda managed to sneak back to her room, Jennifer asked her stay and talk. They settled in the living room, Matilda on the couch and Jennifer in a comfortable reclining chair.

“We need to get to the bottom of why your power came back. To do that, I think we should start with what it was like when it first appeared.”

Matilda nodded. “You are right. I was thinking about that myself. I don’t talk a lot about what my life was like before I met you. I didn’t really need to. It was just... better in every way.”

“You made my life better too. Like night and day.” Jenny’s mind flashed back to the childhood of real and purely psychological torture her aunt had put her through. Matilda, after having experienced only a small dosage of her aunt had fully understood that the broom closet was never going to be used. The broom and dustpan had their place in the kitchen, against a wall.

Jenny knew that the closet was still full of rusty nails and shards of glass, her own personal nightmare in a box, but she hadn’t opened it since she had reclaimed the house. She left those memories alone, they could rot there in the darkness. This was her house, and she and Matilda had reconquered every part of it except for that 12 inch by 12 inch by 5 ft space. And that was ok with her. She pushed the memory away, it wasn’t important. She focused on Matilda’s story.

“The first time I caused something strange to happen, I was very angry. My dad was yelling into my ear about how I needed to stop reading and become part of the family, become a Wormwood, while forcing me to watch the telly. There was something awful on, and he had just ripped up my library book and all I knew was that I wanted to break his precious television set. And I did. I exploded it.”

Jenny put her finger on her chin, feeling like some sort of Freudian Analyst. “So you were an angry child then? I don’t remember that being the case. You always seemed so pleasant.”

“I was frustrated all the time, but I tried to put on a happy face. And, well you made me happy, so that wasn’t a lie.” Jenny peered into Matilda’s face and was rewarded with a smile. She smiled back and watched as Matilda’s cheeks colored with a cute blush.

“So you were were hiding what you were feeling.”

“Yeah...” Matilda suddenly lit up with the light of understanding. This was Jenny’s favorite expression for her. “Oh wow, that makes sense. Somehow my brain unlocked the telekinetic abilities when I had these strong emotions that I was repressing all the time. Like somehow the duality of feeling and trying to hold something back got everything tangled up”

“And now, 10 years later you’ve started repressing something again, so your power has come back.”

“Exactly. But now I can’t avoid using my power when I am feeling the way I feel that makes me want to use the powers. It is psychologically, and perhaps even physically impossible.”

“Did you ever try to avoid using your power, last time?”

“No..but I was 7. I didn’t even attempt to have self control.”

“So it is likely that you power had the same conditions back then, it was just charged by a different emotion.”

“Yeah.” Matilda was smiling, looking relieved to have an explanation for the uncontrollable aspect of her power.

Jenny put her hand on Matilda’s arm, hoping to simultaneously put her at ease and keep her from running. “So are you going to tell her?”

“Tell who what?”

“Tell the woman who has you in such a state that you are moving furniture with your mind that you love her.”

“I don’t... I can’t.” Matilda tried to stand up, but let Jennifer’s loose hold on her arm keep her in her seat. She tapped her feet anxiously and looked anguished.

“She is one of your teachers right? She is older than you, that’s why you’ve been hiding your feelings for her.” Jennifer went on with her deductions, reading from Matilda’s face that she was right on the money. “It’s ok. I won’t judge you. You can tell me about her.”

“Jenny...” Matilda choked, her face twisted as she stood up and pulled her hand from Jenny’s grasp. “You are right. You are scarily right but I can’t I...” She stepped backward, bumped into a wall and then found the way out of the room.

Jenny listened to her run up the stairs and slam the door. Matilda’s reaction seemed sudden and  overdramatic. Why was she so reticent? Jenny thought about the information she pried out of Matilda so far. An older woman, one of Matilda’s teachers, which was why she had to hide her feelings. Matilda would have mentioned her name at some point, offhandedly. Nobody could avoid talking about the person they loved. But Jenny came up blank. Matilda talked frequently about the concepts and themes she was studying, but she hadn’t ever focused on a specific professor. Whenever they were together, Matilda always seemed entirely focused on her, on Jenny. It was one of the wonderful things about her.

And then it clicked.

Jenny drew her long legs up in her chair and hugged them. She sat very still like this for a long time, rethinking everything.

 

 

Matilda curled up on her bed, burrowing her face into her pillow. She didn’t cry like this, like a torrent, like her whole body was trying to flush itself out of her eyes, she didn’t cry like this ever. She sucked in hagard lungfuls of air and coughed them out. She felt so full of self pity and she didn’t pity herself, she didn’t deserve to pity herself. Her life was amazing, it was so good, it was good enough. Jenny had picked her out of all the other children she had ever come across. She had adopted her. She was special to Jenny in a way no other person was, and that was enough. It had to be enough. 

When she felt like she was finally over her crying jag, Matilda lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She felt...young and alone and desperately in need of some human contact. So she sought it out.

Jenny glanced up when she approached, staring at her in a way that was.. a little wary. Matilda edged closer, chewing on her lip. They sort of stared at each other, Jenny’s eyes searching her own.

“Are you ok, Matilda?” she asked. She had asked that an awful lot recently.

“Could I...could I get a hug?” Matilda asked her. She had never needed to ask before, but then, she had never before been afraid to ask.

Jenny opened up her arms and Matilda leaned over and clung to her. She shook a little as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to push the tears away. Jenny pulled her closer, pulled her so that she was basically in Jenny’s lap, knees digging into the cushion on either side. Matilda hadn’t hugged Jenny like this since she was very small, and she clung to her, burying her head into her neck and smelling Jenny’s hair, letting the scent wash over her and calm her down. Jenny rubbed her back soothingly and muttered soft words of comfort that Matilda couldn’t actually make out.

As soon as Matilda felt less like the bottom of her world was falling away and she was clinging to the only thing that remained still, and more like she was sitting in the lap of the woman she loved and desired, she basically fell off the chair in her hurry to get away.

Jenny let out a long shuddering gasp of air as soon as Matilda had disappeared. She hadn’t expected to see Matilda downstairs again tonight, in fact she had expected to have till tomorrow to deal with the bundle of frustrated emotion that was Matilda right now. She felt wired, as if Matilda had shoved all her buzzing emotions inside of her when she had mauled her.

She got up to get her coat. She badly needed to clear her head, and the cool outside air would help.  


	4. Being Heard

 

Matilda withdrew so much she almost seemed physically smaller. Jenny tried to give her every opportunity to talk to her, but she avoided every chance by simply never being around. Her absence was partially warranted; she had her Masters dissertation to write up during summer break which she would have to present in the fall in order to be accepted into the PHD candidacy program at Leeds. She was spending a lot of time in the University library. But it was absurd that she would be spending breakfast, lunch and dinner out of the house.

Jenny let this go one for a week before she stationed herself in front of the front door when she heard Matilda at the top of the stairs one morning. Matilda didn’t notice her until she had already come down the stairs, so she couldn’t very well disappear back up to her room without it being obvious.

“Good morning,” said Jenny. “I was wondering if we could talk. I have a theory I wanted to put past you. Maybe over breakfast?”

Matilda shrugged into a sweatshirt, actually pulling the hood over her head and tightening it as a physical manifestation of her will to avoid Jenny. “Sorry, I am a bit busy right now. Another time, yeah?” She moved her head back and forth, clearly indicating in her stance that she expected Jenny to move out of her way.

Jenny ignored the body language and crossed her arms, leaning against the door. “My theory is that...”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Matilda cut in.

Jenny narrowed her eyebrows. That was rude. “We need to talk about it. You can’t just avoid it forever.”

“Actually, I am pretty ok with avoiding it forever,” said Matilda. “Please let me through.”

“No, that’s not going to work.” Jenny answered straightening up. She was taller than Matilda, and she used it to her advantage. They were going talk.

“Let me though, Mother.” Matilda said, her voice cutting in a way it never was. Jenny could tell from the way her face went white that she felt bad about it instantly. “Never mind, I’ll use the kitchen door.” She turned to her right and marched resolutely through the kitchen to the side door. Jenny caught up with her, tugging on her backpack before she could escape. Matilda turned around, shocked to be physically restrained.

“You don’t call me mother. You have never in your life called me mother.” Jenny said, frustrated at the wall she saw coming down over Matilda’s face. “That is NOT our relationship to each other. You are my friend and I am trying to help you.”

“How?”

“You need to express yourself. It is your hidden emotions that trigger the power and it is your hidden emotions that make them uncontrollable. If you stopped hiding your feelings maybe the power would go away, or at least become controllable.”

Matilda sighed. “Yeah, I had come to the same conclusion.”

“So, are you going to try it out? This might be how you get control over the situation.”

Matilda squirmed in place, running her hands through her hair and pulling on her cheeks in a active display of her anxiety. “But I can’t tell her Jenny. You don’t understand and I am not going to explain why but I legitimately cannot tell her.”

Jenny swallowed against the lump in her throat, willing herself to be brave for Matilda’s sake. She pinned Matilda down with her eyes. “What if I understood Matilda? Could you tell her then?”

Matilda stilled and Jenny suddenly wondered if she had been mistaken. Surely she was mistaken. But no, that vulnerable look on Matilda’s face told her otherwise. Matilda’s jaw trembled as she waivered between speaking and remaining silent.

 

Jennifer knew? Matilda had been careful to not even think about why she was avoiding Jenny for the past week, filling her mind with thoughts of her research paper alone. Jenny couldn’t possibly know, she would have said something already. But then, Matilda had cunningly avoided her all weeks so...

“I’m here. You can take your time. I’m not going anywhere.” Jenny assured her.

Matilda was the one who wanted badly to escape. She felt exposed. Jenny was looking at her, looking her directly in the eyes. God, if she could just look away for a second then Matilda would be able to breathe and make something up.

She grabbed onto the back of a kitchen table and placed her backpack on it, putting it between Jenny and herself; using it as a crutch and for some cover, silly as that was. She needed something to hold on to. If she was going to do this.

Jenny smiled gently at her.

“Ok.” She cleared her throat. “I lo... love you,” she said, stumbling over the simple sentiment.

Jennifer smiled. “I love you too.” But she said it easily, so Matilda knew she meant it that way, in the easy way they should love each other, not the hard wretchedly obsessive way that Matilda meant.

“This isn’t easy for me,” Matilda explained. She felt like Jennifer could see everything, like she was shining a bright light on her emotions and Matilda wanted to blink and hide like a baby would hide from the world by hiding her eyes. It was the scariest thing that had ever happened to her, being seen by Jennifer, and yet the best as well. So she told her that.

“Being seen by you is everything. I want your attention every time I am in the room with you. I need it, like I need to breathe. You are... amazing, and you already know I think that about you. But it’s more that that, you are so... hot...god I mean you are attractive and this sounds like I am objectifying you, but that’s the thing Jenny. I am. I want you. And it’s not easy to say these things to you because I know that you don’t want me back, so it’s hard ok? Do you get that this is hard for me?”

Jenny broke their gaze first. “Yeah. Yeah I get it.”

Matilda picked up her backpack and made it out kitchen door. Once outside she leaned against the wall and shook, her heart pounding hard enough that it hurt. If she thought about  the way Jenny had been looking at her, intently, like there was nobody else in the world as important as she was, she’d have to move mountains. As it was she used the nervous energy thrumming inside herself to bring the trash cans out to the curb, pretending to lift them with her hands.

 

The sound of the door closing rocked Jenny on her feet. She realized she had been holding her breath and let it out. She was more shaken than she thought she would be by Matilda’s confession. It made her made her chest tighten and she realized that what she was feeling was sorrow. For the first time ever she wished that they had met at a different time in their lives. If they had both met as adults...

But no, Jenny wouldn’t have survived waiting until Matilda had grown up before she had met her. Jennifer had been slowly dying, fading away under the oppression of her Aunt. She didn’t want to know whether she would have succomed to bitterness or depression. Matilda had saved her from either future.

Matilda surprised her by coming home at lunch. She explained, “I was kinda useless today. I kept getting distracted and if I had floated one more book the librarian would have caught on. So I came home. Um... because I kept thinking about you.”

Jenny didn’t know what to do with Matilda’s frank gaze, so she ignored it.

Matilda was allowed to say anything on her mind. This had become the new household rule. It was like therapy - in that it was at times agonizing and at other times of freeing to go through, both for Jenny and for Matilda. Jenny tried not to react to what Matilda tells her. She didn’t want to encourage her, she just wanted to provide a safe space where Matilda could be free to feel. It was hard though, and it took an emotional toll on her.

Sometimes what Matilda said made her want to hug Matilda and never let go.

“I love the way you laugh. It’s inviting, like you want everyone in the world to laugh with you. I have never heard you laugh at another person. Ever.”

Sometimes what Matilda said made her uncomfortable.

“I just want to kiss you. Like just one kiss and I could be happy forever. It would be enough to last me for the rest of my life.”

“Matilda, I am not going to kiss you.” Jenny said firmly. The air on the back of her arms was standing up. The room felt electrified, and every object not nailed down in the living room was hovering around them. Jenny couldn’t get the image of a snake charmer out of her head. She felt like Matilda is a cobra about to strike, and she didn’t know what form that strike would take.

Matilda closed her eyes and concentrated, dropping everything in the room at once. It all landed in a crashing mess around them.

“Oh god, I am so sorry,” said Matilda, rushing to start picking things up. “I didn’t mean to drop everything and I shouldn’t have said that. But it’s been on my mind and... Fuck! I cut my finger.” She held up the bloody appendage.

Jenny helped bandage Matilda’s finger. She wanted to kiss it to make it feel better. The urge was so ridiculously strong that it made her laugh. Matilda caught the laughing attack from her and they leaned against each other, falling into a giggling heap on bathroom floor. Matilda managed to sit up first and looked down at her still helpless friend. Jenny stoped laughing, knowing that Matilda was looking at her lips again and wondering if she should just let her.

Matilda squeezed her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“What are you doing?” asked Jenny, sitting up.

“I’m thinking about that one time I had to dissect a pig.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s a really effective mood killer. See, no floaty.”

“That’s terrible! Don’t do that!” admonished Jenny.

“It works.” Matilda shrugged. “And you don’t really want me talking about kissing you. I can tell it’s making you uncomfortable and it’s not really working anyway.”

Matilda was right, but Jenny didn’t just want to give up. “It might just take some time...”

“No... It’s not working. It’s just making me feel like it is okay to say these things to you. But it’s not ok. I am not being respectful of your feelings.” Matilda got off the bathroom floor and Jenny followed her.

“I think I’m just going to have to get used to the new state of affairs. Matilda, Former Child Genius now with Magical Telekinetic Powers of LOVE!” she grandstanded. “Do you know like the worst thing though? I don’t think I am ever going to be able to have a sexual relationship anyone ever. If I start getting the least bit hot under the collar things start zooming around the room. If I get close to actually having some sort of sexual experience, everything goes haywire.”

“But that’s only when you can see right?” Jenny prided herself on her ability to talk about the realities of Matilda’s curse with a straight face. It was actually getting easier.


	5. Being Touched

 

For the first time in her life, Matilda doubted the experimental method. It was the pure search of knowledge that had Matilda sitting on a chair in the living room wearing a blindfold. Beside her she knew there was a bowl of popcorn. If anything got too intense, she was supposed to focus on that. It was already too intense.

They had figured out that moving many small objects  actually used up more of her power than moving a single large object of the same mass. Neither mass, nor size, nore volume seemed to hinder Matilda’s ability. Only the complexity of moving many small objects at once seemed to use up the power, as if it depended on her brains ability to keep track of it all. The more turned on she was, the more individual items she could pick up.

“I’m not going to touch you inappropriately.” Jenny promised.

Matilda wondered if Jenny had any idea of what it was like to be in her position right now. Any touch at all would be inappropriate. She was desperately waiting for the promised touch of Jenny’s fingers against her skin.

The lights were off and all the blinds in the room were closed. Jenny could still see by the small light that leaked through, but Matilda was completely blind because of the soft silk scarf that Jenny had wrapped and tied securely around her head. Matilda still had a psychic hold on her familiar pack of cards, if she hadn’t she thought she would probably go crazy. She shuffled them anxiously; something she could do even with her eyes closed by this time.

“This is a really bad idea.” Matilda said nervously. “I might hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me,” Jenny assured her. “Now, drop the cards.”

It was hard to let them go, almost like she had to peel them out of her own grasp. Once she had, she reflexively grabbed for them again. But without sight she couldn’t grab anything.

“Your power is still active right?”

Her power was definitely still active. It actually felt alive as it battered against her eyelids. “Yes.”

“Open your eyes if they are closed.”

Matilda did so. Even though she knew that fabric was pressing against her face, she couldn’t see it.

“Can you budge the blindfold?”

Matilda couldn’t. Not with her powers at least. She wanted to reach up and take it off.

“Ok, then we can start. I am not going to touch you.”

Matilda couldn’t help the pout that came to her face. She wanted Jenny to touch her.

“But I am sure you can imagine being touched by someone, right?”

She could. She imagined Jenny’s lips ghosting over her cheek. She imagined the way Jenny’s hair would feel as it brushed against her skin. God, if only she actually would touch her.

Jenny stood in the dark and watched Matilda. Her face was uplifted as if she was expecting something. She was so beautiful in the blue shadows of the room. Her heart clenched and she let out an unsteady breath. She tried to tell herself that this was just a reaction to the moment, but right then she wanted nothing more than to touch the girl who was so clearly wanting it.

She felt like she had to say something to break the moment. “You still can’t remove the blindfold right?”

Matilda shook her head.

Jenny couldn’t help it. She did something she shouldn’t have. She did what she had promised not to do. She touched Matilda.

“You said you weren’t going to do that.” Matilda muttered, freezing at the light touch.

“This is just a test,” Jenny soothed, sliding her hand up Matilda’s arm and tangling her fingers in her hair. She had never touched anyone like this before, and it shocked her to see the way Matilda reacted to it.

She gasped. It was a small sound, but loud enough that it could not be ignored for what it was, a sex sound.

Matilda grabbed her seat with both hands in order to avoid tearing her blindfold off. She needed to see so bad, her ears were thrumming. “Please.. I need to see. I need to see.”

“Hold on. Don’t take it off yet.” Jenny cupped Matilda’s cheek. She wanted to kiss her. It felt right.

Matilda shook her head, not realising how close Jenny was. She scrunched her eyes shut in order to hold back the beast that was fighting for control behind her vision. “I can’t.” She reached up and pulled the silk scarf off her face. Even then, she kept her eyes closed. “The popcorn.”

Jenny put the bowl in her hands. As soon as Matilda felt it was safe, she opened her eyes and caught the popcorn in her mental grip. The popcorn exploded out of the bowl, filling every space of the room. It swirled in three dimensional fractal patterns that fluidly changed shape moment to moment. It was incredible.

Matilda breathed hard, trying to control the rapid beating of her heart. “You touched me after you said you wouldn’t,” she accused Jenny.

“It was a test.” Jenny rationalized again. The truth was she just really wanted to touch her. She needed to figure out what that meant, but alone. She couldn’t put that on Matilda now. It would just confuse everything. “I wanted to prove that you wouldn’t hurt me. You didn’t. You realize what that means, right? You can still have an intimate relationship with someone even if we don’t find a way to shut down the Telekinesis. It just might require a blindfold.”

Matilda shook her head. “But I can just take the blindfold off. I don’t have enough self control for that.”

Jenny thought for a moment. “Ropes?”

They stared at each other, both of them rather stunned at the suggestion that had come (fairly innocently) out of Jennifer’s mouth.

Jenny lay in bed, dread and longing pooling in her stomach. She had crossed a line today. Ten years ago, she had signed a contract making her Matilda’s legal guardian. It was a funny sort of guardianship, one where Matilda made all of her own decisions and Jenny just signed the papers when it was required of her.

In every step it had been Matilda leading and her following. First when she saved Jenny from her Aunt. And then Matilda had held her hand as she had fired almost all the old teachers at the school and hired new ones that actually cared about children and children’s education. Matilda had patiently helped her get over the fairly crippling social anxiety that cropped up when she spoke to certain kinds of people, often by simply being in the room with her when she recognised the type.

But Jenny had to play the role she had signed up for. Matilda needed someone to cling to right now, but she couldn’t cling back. It would be selfish to hold on to the brilliant light in her life that was Matilda. Someone was going to come along and captivate the girl, and Jenny had to be able to let her go so that could happen. The fact of Matilda’s eroticaly charged power had blurred the lines. Tomorrow she was going to have to redraw them. She had no idea how she was going to have the strength.

She stole into Matilda’s room at dawn. Matilda was still sleeping soundly. She pulled out a chair to sit and watch her as the sun rose. When the light of the sun had crept up Matilda’s shoulder and started flirting with falling on her face, Jenny crept out of the room before it could wake her.

 


	6. Being Hurt

Matilda woke up to the sun shining directly in her eyes. She rolled over, covering her head with her blanket. As she lay there, she registered a strange sort of anxiety in her stomach. She must have been dreading something as she fell asleep. And then she remembered the previous day. She wondered if anyone had ever entered a coma out of pure embarrassment.

She took a long time in the shower, then tarried in the bathroom, brushing her hair and generally avoiding the day as much as possible. She was finally lured down by the amazing smell is coming out of the kitchen. Jenny had been cooking up a full English, she must have woken up a long time ago.

There was bacon, there was sausage, there were eggs, there was toast and bananas and honey to go on the toast. It was Matilda’s favorite meal, but it was not her birthday, so she was suspicious.

“I hope you’re hungry,” says Jennifer, as she slipped two plates on to the table.

“Me too,” said Matilda. Her nervous stomach was quickly won over by abundant food.

“So..why the spread?” asked Matilda.

“I felt like cooking,” said Jenny. She looked away from Matilda, down at her food and frowned at it. She hadn’t hardly touched her food, mostly just prodded it with her fork.

Matilda didn’t like that look. She pushed her plate away half finished and just munched on the toast, staring at the visibly agitated woman.

Jenny finally looked up. “I wanted to say... I am sorry about yesterday. I really feel like I crossed a line.”

“It’s not your fault. I crossed it first.” Matilda really wanted Jenny to not try to apologise toward her. Yesterday had been the most intense thing she had ever experienced, but not in a bad way, definitely not in a bad way. She was embarrassed that she was so needy, that Jenny saw her like that. But Jenny had honestly been trying to help.

“Yes. You did.” Jenny agreed.

Matilda’s stomach dropped.

“We need to reset our relationship.”

What did she mean by that?

“You need to concentrate on getting over me. And I need to concentrate on maintaining strong boundaries between us.”

Matilda felt like she wanted to cry. “No, I don’t want to get over you.” She knew she sounded like a whining child. She couldn’t help it.

Jenny wasn’t looking at her. “And I think we need to start looking for an apartment for you.”

“No!” she groaned, brushing away the tears that were springing to her eyes. “You promised this was my home. That I could always stay.” You promised me tea and crumpets when we I was 80.

Jenny remembered the occasion. How in love she had been with the girl back then. But it had been a pure love, not this confused possessive mess of emotions she felt now. She was jealous of the imaginary future suitor whom she was sure would steal Matilda’s heart, for God’s sake.

“You need a break from me. And God knows, I need a break from you.”

Matilda felt like her heart was being macerated. This is what heartbreak feels like, she realized. She could hardly unclench her throat enough for speech. “Please, Jenny. Don’t do this. I’ll never mention that I like you again. I’ve been like this about you for years and you didn’t notice. You don’t even know how good I am at keeping it hidden. I can do boundaries.”

“Matilda, just listen to yourself. Do you think that I want that for you? Hiding your feelings, stuck in this house with me, never able to get over me because I’m too selfish to let you go? No. I’m doing this for your own good.”

“I wish you didn’t know,” Matilda anguished. “I mean, it’s such a small part of how I feel about you. You make me happy. I don’t need anything else from you. I just need to be able to be with you. I need to be able to see you every day. I need to be able to talk to you. My strange telekinetic powers are making it seem like it’s all some sort of sex thing. But it’s not. I just love you.”

Jenny stared at the girl who was basically begging her not to kick her out, feeling like her guts were being twisted with every word. She had known that this would be hard and it was so hard. She couldn’t even bear to be on the other side of the table from Matilda, she wanted to hug her so bad. She stood up and came around the side of the table, reaching out for Matilda’s hand and grasping it. Trying to be a comfort.

“I feel...” Jenny sighed, “I feel a lot of those things too. And I do understand what you are going through right now because this is really hard for me too.” She could feel her resolve weakening by the moment, just from looking into Matilda’s watering eyes. I must be cruel to be kind, she told herself.

She reached out and cupped Matilda’s chin with her hand, her thumb caressing the soft skin ever so slightly. Matilda breathed sharply inward, her mouth falling open. Oh God help her. The girl could only look into Jenny’s eyes for a moment before she had to turn away. She caught sight of a plate of eggs, which flew into the air and then smacked against a wall. Some of the eggs stuck before falling.

“But it’s also a sex thing and I cannot accept it.”

Matilda closed her mouth, and worked to control her breathing. She wiped a stray tear out of her eye and stood up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She pushed her chair in and went over to pick up the broken pieces of the plate. Jenny watched her hunch over, trembling and struggling not to give in to her emotions. Jenny felt in that moment like she was the meanest person to ever cross the earth. She had surpassed even her aunt in her ability to torture others.

“I got it,” she said, touching Matilda’s shoulder. Matilda took the reprieve and dashed up to her room without ever looking at Jenny.

Jenny got out the broom and dustpan and went to clean up at least a small part of the mess she had created.


	7. Being Ok

 

_This is what it feels like to want to die,_ Matilda thought to herself, feeling as if her whole body was stretching out across the Universe, and yet as though she was very small; just a pinprick among a vast and fiery sea of stars. She felt as if she was drowning. She hugged herself tightly for a solid minute and then rolled over and got out of bed. That was enough of that. She really didn’t enjoy self pity. She prefered action. _I got to get myself out of this hole._

She went over to the computer opened it up, searching google for a short while before she figured out what website she was looking for.

> I am a [Female] and I am [Gay]

It was the first time she had labeled herself in that exact way, which was a bit weird. She gave the site a couple more details and then started working on her profile.

 

  
A couple hours later, there was a knock on the door. Matilda couldn’t help it that her heart lurched painfully in her chest, but she tried to ignore the feeling.

“Come in.” she called.

Jennifer came in and shut the door behind her very softly. She seemed nervous. Matilda looked out of her sideways from under the fall of her bangs. She finally seemed to realise that she ought to have a reason to be there, and un-froze.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“You keep asking that.”

Jenny shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I want you to be ok,” she said.

“I am ok.” said Matilda, not exactly feeling it, but close enough. “Can I show you something?”

She opened up the dating profile and angled so that Jenny could see.

“OKcupid?”

“Yeah. It’s a dating website.”  
Oh hey, I already got a response.” Matilda clicked on the message icon and read.

> Heyyy, my name is Shauna and I’ve seen you before! You were walking into the library on campus carrying a TON of books. *shy* I thought you looked cute in a sort of nerdy way. WHICH I LIKE! *caugh* Ummm wanna hang out some time - catch a coffee?

Matilda felt her neck prickle, knowing Jenny was reading over her shoulder. She clicked on Shauna’s profile and clicked on a picture. A large image of a toned girl wearing a purple sports bra and black football shorts filled the screen. She had short blond hair that curled around her ears and a sort of fierce grin. Matilda hit backspace, embarrassed by the expanse of skin.

“A footballer eh? Hmm, I don’t know Matilda. I think you would get bored with someone who wasn’t at least a little bit intellectual.”

Matilda shrugged, then looked up at Jenny with a serious look in her eye. “Please don’t ask me to move out right now. I don’t feel like I could handle it, emotionally.” She let herself look like how she felt, which was fragile.

Jenny went to sit on the bed and mirrored the way Matilda was sitting on her chair, drawing up one of her long legs and playing with her bare toes. “You are really putting me in a spot here,” she said.

Matilda just stared at her, begging her to reconsider.

“I’ve never been in love before,” Jenny admitted quietly. “But I’ve read a lot of books that have touched on the subject. I think you would have an easier time getting over me if you were able to get some distance?” her voiced raised up question. “And I don’t know how long it would take, maybe a couple months, maybe a year, and you could move back here?”

Matilda didn’t want to look into Jenny’s eyes to be convinced. She spoke soft and low. “So what you are saying is...when I stop needing you, I can be with you? But if I want you, I have to leave.”

Jenny laid down on Matilda’s bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Yes.”

Matilda stood up and walked over to where Jenny was laying in her bed. “Move over,” she asked.

Jenny scooted over.

Matilda got into bed with her, cautiously wrapping her arm around Jenny’s middle and burying her face in Jenny’s shoulder. She just breathed.

 

  
Jenny was extremely cognizant of the warmth beside her. She hoped that Matilda couldn’t feel the way her heartbeat stuttered at the feeling of Matilda’s arm across her stomach, or somehow notice how her stomach fluttered because her shirt was taut where Matilda was gripping it with her hand. She was realizing a scary and fundamental truth - if she had Matilda’s powers, right now things would be levitating.

She fought against the need to roll over and wrap her arms around Matilda’s waist. She didn’t move, because right now any movement she made would be to pull Matilda closer. She fought the need for so long that she realised that Matilda had fallen asleep. She carefully disentangled herself from Matilda and slipped out of the bedroom. It was still only the afternoon so she went downstairs and put on some tea. She needed to think, or stop thinking. Whichever made things less confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people like this fic. It's sort of my baby, you know? I've been thinking about this story for 10 years, after all. The final chapters are here, carefully written in my head, but I haven't had the chance to type them up yet. Soon, I hope. Thanks so much for reading, and as I said at the start, this fic is for the people who have waited for years for me to finish this story. This is for you. Thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, if you find any mistakes in punctuation or spelling, feel free to leave a note. I love how much easier it is to edit fic at AO3.


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